1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of collaborative computing and more particularly to the field of human-to-human collaborative session requests queueing and dequeuing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Real time communications systems provide a substantial enhancement over more traditional, asynchronous communications systems. Electronic mail delivery systems, the prototypical asynchronous communications systems, in its time represented a giant leap forward in respect to global interpersonal communications. Prior to electronic mail, individuals primarily communicated via telephone, facsimile and post. With electronic mail, however, individuals expect near instant delivery of text, and even imagery, audio and video, without incurring the delay typical of the postal system, or the expense associated with telephony and fax technologies.
Despite the ubiquity of electronic mail, asynchronous communications systems lack several elements common in the realm of real time communications systems. In particular, the seemingly instant delivery of a message cannot be experienced in the world of electronic mail. In a real-time society, the minor latencies associated with electronic mail often cannot be suitable for the task at hand where a real-time conversation will be required in addressing a problem or performing a collaborative task. More importantly, often the feel and nature of a “conversation” as it is known to human beings only can be approximated through real time communications where the participants to a conversation feel the spontaneity of an exchange of ideas, much as is the case in a live, face-to-face conversation.
The recent rapid development of the Internet has led to advanced modes of synchronous, real-time collaboration able to fulfill the real-time communicative requirements of the modern computing participant. Using the Internet as a backbone, individuals worldwide can converge in real-time in cyberspace to share ideas, documents and images in a manner not previously possible through conventional telephony and video conferencing. To facilitate collaboration over the Internet, a substantial collection of technologies and protocols have been assembled to effectively deliver audio, video and data over the single data communications medium of the Internet. These technologies include several human-to-human collaborative environments such as instant messaging and persistent chat rooms.
Generally a human-to-human collaborative session can be initiated by soliciting the participation of one or more designated participants. When a designated participant accepts a request to engage in the session, the session will be established. On many occasions, however, the designated participant will not be able to accept the requested session, either because the participant is not available or because the participant chooses expressly to not participate in the requested session at the time of the request. In that circumstance, the requested session can be queued for processing when the designated recipient becomes available.
When a designated participant becomes available to participate in a human-to-human collaborative session, the participant can review the queue of pending sessions. Within the queue, some pending sessions will be considered by the participant to be of a higher priority than other sessions. Higher priority sessions will be established first while lower priority sessions will be established later. In any event, in many cases, the queue can be shallow enough that the designated participant can determine which pending sessions are more important than others. Where the queue grows to include a multiplicity of pending sessions, however, it can be much more difficult for the designated participant to prioritize the establishment of human-to-human collaborative sessions for the pending requests.